


Caution to the wind

by Multifandom_damnation



Category: Titans (TV 2018)
Genre: Animal Traits, Bad Decisions, Best Friends, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Mind Control Aftermath & Recovery, Post-Season/Series 02, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Project Cadmus (DCU) is Evil, Running Away, Team Dynamics, Touch-Starved, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unresolved Emotional Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-18
Updated: 2020-03-18
Packaged: 2021-02-28 23:07:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,525
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23195242
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Multifandom_damnation/pseuds/Multifandom_damnation
Summary: Real friends don't leave you alone in a giant tower with an unconscious guy and a dog. Real friends don't get themselves arrested just so they didn't have to hear from you. Real friends wouldn't take days and days to know if you were kidnapped. Real friends wouldn't blame you for things that were out of your control. Real friends would help you cope after being mind-controlled to kill a bunch of people. Real friends wouldn't forget that you existed in exchange for ignoring their sexual tension.Cadmus helped Garfield realize who his real friends were, and once he realized that there was no more love for him in the Titans, he packed a bag with all his things and prepared to travel back to Covington, Ohio, back to Rita and Larry and Cliff, and he knew that there was nothing that the Titans could do to stop him. Thankfully, he will always have Conner at his back.
Relationships: Kon-El | Conner Kent & Garfield Logan
Comments: 21
Kudos: 55





	Caution to the wind

**Author's Note:**

> Listen guys... this is a really shitty fic, don't get me wrong. It's like, real bad. When I started writing it, I thought the IDEA was good, but as I started actually getting into the nitty-gritty I knew what a mistake I had made. But it's 7000 words long, and I refuse to get rid of it, so have this steaming pile of garbage. I didn't even have the energy to publish this in the first place. It's taken me 5 hours and the summary??? If it's shit, it's because I re-wrote it like, 12 times, and I'm still not happy with it. But you know what? Even though this fic isn't one of my best, I still love the dynamic that Gar and Conner have, and I hope that those of you brave enough to read this enjoy it too x

It was quite a surprise to Garfield in particular that he had managed to last as long as he had before he gave in to the insistence of the angry tiger that prowled day and night within his chest to pack a bag in the dead of night and ensure that he had enough money in his wallet for a bus trip from San Francisco back to Chief's Manor and back home to the loving arms of his family.

The tiger had been urging him to do this for a while now, but Garfield had been too afraid and too selfish to listen to it, even though he knew that the tiger’s main function in their little dynamic was to keep him safe no matter the cost. He just couldn’t bring himself to leave them, to turn his back on the team he felt so fondly for, to give up on those that had never given up on him. Although, it wasn’t like they were a team anymore. He was mostly doing this because he didn’t even think that they would notice that he was missing.

As the tiger urged him forward in its insistence, Garfield wasn’t even aware of what he was shoving into the little backpack that had come with him all the way to San Francisco. Some shirts, some pants, some clean underwear, some socks. He always wore his jacket, and he only owned one pair of shoes, so his very minimal possessions fit within the small bag with relative ease. He didn’t have any other sentimental objects. No books or photos or collectables. All of those he had left back home in his room so they didn’t get damaged on the trip, and he was all the more glad for his foresight because it meant that he’d be greeted with all his favourite things when he got to sleep in his own bed.

He wasn’t sure if he wanted to leave a note. Maybe they’d think he’d been kidnapped again, or maybe they wouldn’t worry about it at all. He wasn’t sure anymore. There had been a time when Garfield was sure that any member of the team, no matter how little they knew each other, would drop everything to make sure that he was safe and alright. But now he barely knew the people he shared the building with, almost like he had been travelling with strangers wearing masks and now that those masks had been removed after months of company, they were strangers all over again.

There was no point to leave them a note, the tiger eventually decided for him when he paused his packing to consider it. They wouldn’t even find it until many days later, and by that point, he’d already be back home with Larry and Cliff and Rita and he would call them to let them know that he was safe.

He hadn’t called them to let him know he was coming yet, though. He told himself that he wanted it to be a surprise when he showed up on the doorstep, but really, he knew that it was because he didn’t want to disappoint them if he changed his mind during the trip over there.

While the tiger grew more and more impatient and desperate with every passing moment he spent in the tower, Garfield tried to focus on packing, but he knew deep down that his heart wasn’t in it. He could never go back home. Not really. While the three people he loved most in the world would care for him and treat him like they always had, the Chief wouldn’t be so easy to persuade, especially after Garfield sided against him for Rachel and ran away to go and join the circus.

His hands were shaking. The tiger didn’t stop pushing him to continue shoving clothes into his bag, but with each item he held in his hands and put away just as quickly, he found himself resisting, almost. He was scared. He wasn’t sure what would happen if he left. Maybe, when he got back home, they wouldn’t even want him anymore, and he would end up alone and on the streets?

The tiger made a deep sound. No, it reminded him. Never alone.

It wasn’t just because he felt unloved. Maybe, if that were the case, packing his things like this would be considered by some as an over-reaction. Maybe, he’d have a conversation with Dick and the rest of the Titans about what needed to change in order for him to stay.

But that wasn’t the issue. Well, not entirely. It was true that he did feel unloved, but he was packing his bags and getting the hell out of dodge because neither he nor the tiger felt safe anymore. Not just the regular kind of safe where he could close his eyes without worrying about being attacked by secret organizations intent on studying him and experimenting on him, but because he didn’t trust himself. 

Ever since Cadmus, something within him was different. Not just mentally, where they had cut his head open and played around in his brain and changed his very personality and being, or emotionally when he stressed about leaving the tower without company and where he dreaded being left alone and cried himself to sleep. No, he was the most worried about losing control and hurting someone he cared about.

Cadmus had changed him, maybe irreversibly. The tiger felt it too. They were feral, now. Angry. There was a dark, bottomless hole deep within him that so far, he hadn’t been able to fill, and he feared that he would never be able to. Sometimes, he would get unexpectedly, inexplicably angry, so angry that it shocked even the tiger, and Garfield would look in the mirror and wonder who was looking back at him. On the nights when he wasn’t dreaming about Cadmus, he was dreaming of waking up with blood on his tongue and raw flesh caught between his teeth and leaving his room to find the rest of the Titans torn up and bleeding on the cool linoleum floor.

Rachel was gone. Rachel, for the brief time they had been friends, inseparable, had been his rock. Had calmed him when he was angry, had comforted him when he cried, had held his hand when he was scared. But now Rachel was gone, had been gone for a while, and all he had left was the tiger. Well, the tiger, and Conner.

He was dead. Cadmus had killed him. Had killed the young man that Rita and Larry and Cliff and Dick and Rachel and Jason and Kory had known. He couldn’t stay in a building where nobody knew him, and couldn’t go home to a place where he wouldn’t be recognized. He was fated to remain in limbo, the in-between, so close to finding a home full of love and comfort, yet so far.

The tiger prodded the back of his mind, gentle and understanding but pushing all the same, and Garfield shook himself out of his thoughts and finished packing his things and zipped the bag up. It caught on a pair of unfolded green socks, and he impatiently pulled the zip backwards, scrunched the socks up into a ball, chucked them into a rather spacious corner of the bag, and pulled the zip all the way back up.

Satisfied, he slung the bag over his shoulder, the tiger pleased with his efforts and was just about to stand up when he heard footsteps from the now open door behind him. “You’re leaving us.”

Garfield winced, and the tiger growled low in frustration at not hearing his approach. Conner stood at the door and watched with big eyes as Garfield stood up and turned around to face him. “Yeah man, I am.”

“Why?” Conner asked. Krypto whined by his ankles. 

How could Garfield explain to Conner, to someone so pure and gentle and new to the world, that people change and they lie and that leaving was the better of two evils for everyone involved? “Because I… I just can’t be here anymore, Kon. This isn’t my home anymore. I don’t feel… safe. I haven’t felt safe here since Cadmus. Nobody here understands me. They don’t know me anymore. I just… I can’t stay here. I have to go. I’m sorry. But you understand that, right? Trying to find somewhere that you belong?”

He paused as he waited for an answer. Conner bit his lip as he thought, and fiddled with the hem of his shirt like a child would tighten their hold on their blanket. “Where would you go?”

“Covington, Ohio,” Garfield tightened his grip on the backpack strap. “I have a house there. I mean, it’s not really mine, but I used to live there before I joined the Titans, and I have people there who would be happy to see me back.”

Conner didn’t reply for a few long, tense moments, and Garfield worried that he had lost another friend with his actions, the only friend he had left, but a determined look spread across Conner’s face as he nodded. “Alright. Give me ten minutes,” he announced as he turned around. “I’m going to go back.”

“Conner, wait-” Garfield reached forward, confused, and stopped Conner from leaving the room by grabbing the back of his t-shirt. “You don’t have to come with me. I mean, I’m happy for you to come, but don’t think you need to because… I don’t know. Don’t feel obligated to. If you’re happy here, stay here. You don’t have to come with me just because I want to leave.”

Frowning, Conner cocked his head to the side and his eyebrows pinched together. “I go where you go. If you want to leave, I’m going to come with you, every single time. You’re my best friend. I’d rather be wherever you are than here alone. Give me ten minutes,” he repeated before turning around and walking away, his shirt slipping from Garfield’s slackened grip.

“Ok,” Garfield said weakly. It didn’t matter. Conner would hear him no matter how loudly he said it. “Well, I guess I’ll meet you at the elevator, then.”

When even Krypto’s wagging tail was gone from Garfield’s view, he picked up the other bag he had, filled with gifts and souvenirs that he had picked up for everyone back home on his travels, and held that by the straps in the other hand. His heart was a little bit lighter, and the tiger had settled back against his rib cage, purring in satisfaction. He hadn’t expected to set out with company, and now that he had Conner by his side, he felt a lot better about the situation.

On his way out the door, he took one last look on the room that had been his for the last few months, minus the length of time he spent in Cadmus’s lab. He left Donna’s book that he’d finished on the bed. The walls were as bare as they had always been. The bed was made. The window was open just slightly, so the room could air out while he was gone. Probably, maybe, before the others even noticed he was missing. It had never really been his. Sure, it had four walls, a bed, a roof, a few things he had collected and stuck up on the walls to make it look more lived in, more personal and less like it was built as a safe house for a multi-billionaire vigilante, but it had never really felt like it belonged to him no matter how many things he added to it. When Garfield called them, Cliff had suggested carving his name into something permanent, like the wall or the wardrobe or the door, but Garfield wasn’t sure he wanted to do that either. That would make it _too_ personal. It would make it his without a doubt, and he couldn’t think of a worse thing. The more time passed after Cadmus, after Donna, after Rachel, after Jason, after Rose, the more Garfield was grateful that he had the foresight to ignore Cliff’s advice.

The hallway was dark, as was the living room and the kitchen and the dining room and the training room. Hank’s snoring was so loud that it could be heard from the hallway from his room. Dawn and Hank slept in separate rooms now, at opposite ends of the hallway, so they had to see each other as little as possible. But all that mattered was that it was dark, and the tiger steered him through the hallways and around furniture so he didn’t have to turn on any lights and risk waking anyone, and he waited by the elevator like he promised Conner he would.

He was standing there, observing the view of the city from the large windows one last time, when the tiger awakened in a flurry of anger, and Garfield felt the hair on his arms and the back of his neck stand on end. “This is a surprise,” someone said from the shadows at the back of the room as Garfield spun around, the tigers growling rising in his throat, its claws pushing through the pads of his fingertips. Dimly, he thought he heard a hissing, but he didn’t take too much note of that, because Dick Grayson was sitting in the darkness, lying in wait, with a beer in one hand and a dark phone in the other. “What are you doing awake so early?”

“None of your business,” Garfield retorted, not at all surprised that the tiger's anger had spilled over to him. Frankly, he was a little angry too. “And what are you doing, sitting out here in the dark like some creeper waiting for me to come out of my room. What if I was naked or something, man? Not cool.”

“But you’re fully dressed,” Dick said, not phased at all. “And you’ve got two bags packed. Almost as if you were planning on leaving in the middle of the night before any of us woke up so you wouldn’t have to see us.”

“It’s not like you would have noticed,” Garfield grumbled, holding the straps to his bags tighter than was necessary. Even if Dick tried to rip the bags from his hold, the tiger wouldn’t let him get far with them, even at the expense of losing Garfield’s favourite jacket. “I’d have been long gone before any of you even realized that I was missing.”

Dick stood up from his chair in the corner, the old leather squeaking with the movement, and placed both his beer bottle and his phone on the glass side table with a sound that rang through the room with a shrill, squeaking sound, like window wipers on a wet windscreen. “Gar, what the hell is this all about? You’re hardly coming out of your room, you don’t talk to us, and now you’re packing your bags and telling me that you’re leaving?”

The tiger urged him on, told him to ignore Dick and leave while he could, to forget Conner, he would understand, but he couldn’t. He was here now, and besides, Garfield wouldn’t leave Conner behind even if the world was ending. “You know what, Dick, the fact that you’re only just noticing all of this means that you were lying to me when we came back and you said that you would take better care of us all.”

It was the first time in a long time that Garfield actually saw Dick… caught off guard. “What-? What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It _means_ ,” Garfield said, voice more guttural and breathy all of a sudden, and he wasn’t sure if the hissing belonged to the dormant snake or the growl belonged to the pleased tiger watching. “That Cadmus royally fucked me up, and even though you knew that, you decided to forget that I existed than talk about what was going on.”

Frowning, Dick took a step forward. “Gar-”

“Nobody talks around here,” Garfield continued as if Dick hadn’t spoken. “Hank and Dawn don’t talk, even though we all know what's going on between them as if it’s some big secret that we haven’t figured out. I haven’t heard from Rachel since she left, and even then I rarely spoke to her when she was here. I know she calls you,” a guilty look crossed Dick’s face and Garfield knew he hit the nail on the head. “The tiger can hear you. She sounds happy. I wouldn’t know, considering she hates me now.”

“Gar, come on-”

“And I don’t even know what to do with Jason. I mean, has anybody seen him recently? Has anyone heard from him? I don’t even know if he’s still alive. I’ve called him every single day since I got back and he hasn’t answered once. I leave him plenty of voicemail messages,” Garfield used his empty hand to gesture. “I don’t even know what the hell Rose is doing here. I’ve seen her, maybe, twice. And wasn’t she in a relationship with Jason? A pretty happy one too? I mean, I’m assuming it’s happy. Jason looked happy when he was with her. I don’t want to think about what he is now if something happened between them. And don’t even get me started on you and Kory.”

The tiger pulled his attention to the opposite side of the room where someone else had entered, and a whiskered snout pushed forward through his discolouring skin as Kory entered the room like she had been there the whole time, teeth pressing through his gums and the growl in his throat more than an impression, and he had to fight it back down. “What about me and Dick?” she asked as she approached, her heels clicking on the tiles. 

He was so busy trying to push the enraged tiger back that his voice still came out deep and guttural as if he had recently gargled hot sand. “Oh, please, as if you weren’t standing there, listening to everything I said. Almost as if you planned all this.”

“We’ve… had a suspicion that you were planning a stunt like this for a while,” Kory admitted, but she had the pride not to look ashamed about it. Dick, on the other hand, looked embarrassed. “It was only a matter of time.”

“So what you’re saying is that you knew that I was planning on leaving and instead of coming to me and talking to me about it, you decided to wait until it was too late and confront me at the last moment just to guilt me into staying?” He retorted. “Real cool, guys.”

“Well, you left us no choice, Gar,” Kory shrugged. “What else did you expect us to do? Let you leave?”

“You could have at least pretended to care about me,” Garfield replied, shouldering his backpack more securely and holding the strap a little tighter. Maybe Dick wouldn’t have been able to stop him, but Kory was a whole other worry, and even without her powers, she was still a force to be reckoned with.

Sighing, Dick pinched the bridge of his nose. “Gar, you’re not thinking clearly about this. Why don’t you go back to bed and we’ll talk about this some more in the morning?”

“Stop treating me like a damn child,” Garfield snapped. “I’ve been thinking about this for a very long time and I’m not going to let you talk me out of it unless you can give me a genuine reason why I should stay.”

“Where would you go?” Kory asked, exasperated. “It’s not like there are many places that you can go to.”

“I’m going to go back to Coverton,” Garfield said. “Back home with Rita and Larry and Cliff.”

Dick shook his head, looking a little bit angry, but Garfield had the feeling that it wasn’t directed at him. “Gar, come on. You can’t go back there. You’re a wanted man at the moment, remember? You’ll never make the journey without being recognized and arrested or something just as bad. Think about this logically.”

The tiger flared up in anger, pushing against his ribcage and his lungs and his spine, fighting through Garfield’s skin to get out, to fight, to protect, but Garfield managed to resist it. “They’ll protect me. I wouldn’t be leaving the house when I get there anyway. And besides, I can look after myself.”

But Dick was still shaking his head, a stormy look on his face and Garfield took a step back towards the elevator. “I’m sorry, Gar, but I can’t let you leave. Not like this. You’re going to get yourself killed, or worse. I can’t allow it.”

“What are you going to do to stop us?” Came a voice from the hallway behind them, and when they turned around, Garfield was very relieved to see Conner standing there, a bag in his hand, Krypto by his heels with his body low to the ground and a guttural growl rumbling in his throat. Conner looked less than impressed as he stood at Garfield’s back, looking between Kory and Dick, who were now taking slow steps backwards away from them.

Garfield had never been so happy to see Conner in all his life. It was the first time in a long time that he had someone like him in his corner. He never knew what it felt like to have a friend that was so entirely his, not even with Rachel, who got to pick and choose on when they were friends. Conner looked like an avenging angel, fists clenched at his sides, a sour look on his face, as he stood so close to Garfield that he could hear his breath. It felt nice to have a friend.

Recoiling, Dick looked between Conner and Garfield and Krypto growling at their feet. “Us? He hasn’t talked you into this as well, has he, Conner?”

Frowning, Conner put a spare hand on Garfield’s shoulder, heavy and comforting. “He didn’t talk me into anything. He actually tried to talk me out of it. I want to go. He’s my friend. I’ll go where he goes.”

Now, Dick and Kory didn’t look so sure of themselves. Garfield, they could stop, could subdue, could take care of. But Conner? They had no chance in hell of trying to fight him, and reasoning with him was just as hard. “What the hell is all this about?” Kory asked. “One minute we’re a team and the next you’re trying to run away?”

The laugh that escaped Garfield’s chest was ragged and bitter. “A team? We’ve never been a team. Dick went and got himself arrested just so he didn’t have to hear from me, and while he was gone, while _all_ of you were gone, a scary group of scientists broke in and took us away. That wouldn’t have happened, _none_ of it would have happened if you guys hadn’t abandoned _me_.”

A flash of sympathy crossed Dick’s face. “Gar, that’s not true-”

“Let him speak,” Conner interrupted sharply, and Dick’s mouth shut as fast as it had opened. 

“Do you know what they did to us?” Garfield continued, and deep down, he felt the tiger grin a feral grin, and Garfield's bones tingle like they did whenever he and the tiger were one in their ambitions. “They took away our free will. They cut me open and stuck things inside my brain- I’ve still got the scar. They made me kill people, innocent people, people who didn’t deserve it, and I couldn’t stop it, couldn’t control my own actions. They made Conner forget who he was, made him forget me and Eve and Krypto and all the people that matter to him just to turn him into a killing machine. You guys have no idea what they did to us. You know why? Because you never ask, and you never listen. I’ve tried to mention it to you guys a few times but not a single one of you has ever stopped to listen. This shouldn’t come as a surprise. If you had actually been paying attention to me, you would have seen this coming.”

That was the first time since it happened that Garfield had been able to speak about what Cadmus did to him without breaking down and losing his nerve, and he was a little bit proud of himself. Maybe it was the tiger sending support through his veins or Conner at his back like an unflinching statue, an immovable mountain, or the anger he felt urging him onwards. What had changed, he wondered, between them that anger was the easiest emotion to conjure?

“Gar,” Kory said, voice much softer than it was when she had first walked in. “You can’t blame us for that. We’ve been busy.”

“Busy doing what?” Garfield retorted. “It’s not like we’d done anything or gone anywhere. The only people who have left the tower are Hank and Dawn, separately, and we all know why. There’s been no missions, no shopping runs, no nothing. Nobody has even gone to look for Jason. We haven’t been busy. Not at all.”

“We didn’t know what they did-”

“Because you didn’t _ask_.”

Dick stepped forward, and Kory’s next reply was cut off as she watched Garfield with cold yet slightly watery eyes. “Gar, we’re not trying to make excuses here. We messed up. We should have done better. We should have caught up with you when things calmed down, but we didn’t. We failed you, and for that, I’m sorry. But you don’t have to leave- we can figure this out. Like a team. Like a family.”

Something painful twinged in Garfield’s chest and he felt like all the breath had just been knocked out of his body. “A family?” he said weakly. “Dick, I wish that was true, but you don’t get to pick and choose which people you want to be a family on certain days. At first, it used to be just you and me and Kory and Rachel. Now, it’s everyone else, and you’ve left me out of the loop.”

Kory shook her head. “Come on, Gar, you’re blowing this out of proportion. It’s not like that.”

“How come, when Jason was captured by Slade, you guys dropped everything to go and save him as quickly as you could, even Hank, who has always disliked Jason, yet when I needed to be rescued, none of you even knew I was missing until days later when someone finally decided to come back to check in on the place, and by that point, I was long gone?” Garfield asked, his voice quiet, almost dangerously so, as the tiger added an extra layer of grit to the ends of his words. “I ended up having to save myself. Sure, Rachel was there at the very end to break their control, but I had to cope with it all on my own. When Jason got here, you made sure he was comfortable and safe, even though you kinda fucked him up, but with me? I had to deal with it myself. You barely even knew I was here. How is that fair? Why would you treat him differently to how you treated me? We were both captured and hurt. The situations were the same. Why was the outcome so different?”

There was a long, stagnant pause as everyone took in his words. The tiger purred like a very pleased cat. Conner squeezed Garfield’s shoulder in support. Dick and Kory exchanged a glance. “We’re sorry, Gar,” Kory said, and she sounded genuine enough. “We really are. We should have done better. We’re sorry.”

“It’s too late now,” Garfield said, shifting his bag to a more comfortable position. “I’m going to go home. Back to Coverton, with Rita and Larry and Cliff. Maybe they’ll help me.”

“We’re not going to stop you,” DIck said, and his voice was barely a whisper. “Do you think… will you ever come back?”

Garfield shrugged. He wasn’t sure. “I don’t know. Maybe. I haven’t decided yet. It depends on how it all plays out.”

“Well, I wish you luck,” Dick said. “Both of you. And I uh… I hope to see you again, on much better terms.”

Something caught in Garfield’s throat, and he wasn’t sure what to say, but the tiger pushed him onwards, and he wordlessly turned around and made his way to the elevator. Hardly a second later, Conner followed him, and both he and Krypto flooded into the small space. As the doors closed, the last thing Garfield saw was the broken expressions of Dick and Kory and the sight of the slowly rising sun lighting up the room from the wide windows and glistening across the furniture, drawing long shadows across the polished linoleum.

The elevator ride to the bottom floor was silent, and when the door opened with a familiar _ding!_ they spilled out onto the footpath without a word. “Which way to the bus stop?” Conner broke the silence, looking to Garfield for direction.

Now that Garfield was out of the building and away from the others, all the fight had left him, and he felt like he was going to collapse. “Um, yeah, I think it’s this way.” 

Before Garfield could move, Conner placed a hand on his arm and stopped him in his tracks. “You look like you’re going to be sick. Do you want to go somewhere and talk about what just happened?”

Numbly, Garfield nodded and he let Conner lead him towards the old warehouse with the peeling paint that they spent so much time in, close enough to the tower that they felt safe and far away enough that they didn’t feel like they were being watched. Garfield hardly remembered the walk there. The tiger settled back, calmer now that they were out of the tower, and gave Garfield the strength he needed to use his legs.

Eventually, they made it into the warehouse thought the door Conner had broken down long ago, and he sat Garfield against the wall, Krypto lying down and settling on his feet. “Are you OK?”

“I don’t know,” Garfield admitted. “That was stupid. I don’t know why I did that.” 

“I don’t blame you,” Conner said. “They don’t treat you very well. I’ve noticed it before. I’m glad that they know how you feel now, even if you had to leave and yell at them for them to understand.”

Closing his eyes, Garfield rested his head against the chipped back wall. He was tired. He could fall asleep right now if he tried. “I don’t even know how to get to Coverton, not by bus. I’ve never taken a bus ride that long before. I’ve always let the tiger lead me, and last time, Dick drove us. I don’t know what I was thinking. I should have… I don’t know. Stayed, I guess.”

But surprisingly, Conner was shaking his head as he slid down the all to sit beside Garfield on the floor. “I don’t think so. I think maybe, now that you’re gone, they’ll realize how rude they’ve been. But… I don’t understand why you left in the first place? Like, I get it, but why are you going back to Coverton? Dick seemed upset when you told him. Almost like he would have been happier for you to go anywhere else.”

Sighing, Garfield focused on the gentle feeling of the tiger, slowly calming down where it resided behind his rib cage. “You know the people I mentioned? The ones who live in the house I’m going to?”

“Rita and Larry and Cliff?”

“Yeah,” Garfield said. “There’s also another guy. Chief. He’s sort of like the boss. He… he makes things, like antidotes, that help people. He travels the world. He helped all of us. Helped me when I was sick in Congo. He’s a genius, but sometimes, he’s not the best… person? He can be mean, and puts you down, and tells you that you’re not good enough. He’ll do anything he can to make sure his tests work, you know?”

Conner frowned. “He doesn’t really sound like someone I’d like to see.”

“He takes a little bit of getting used to,” Garfield admitted. “But really, I was hoping that he could… I don’t know. That he could fix me. Fix whatever Cadmus did to me.”

Something sad flashed across Conner’s face? “Fix you? But… Gar, I don’t think you need to be fixed.”

Somehow, inexplicitly, that tiny seed of doubt, that crack of pain that had grown and festered since his conversation with Dick started to fade a little bit, and it felt like, for the first time, he could breathe again. But though he knew that Conner’s words were genuine, neither he or the tiger were very convinced. “Gosh, Conner, that’s really kind of you to say, but you don’t know what I know.”

“Well, what do you know?” Conner asked. “How am I supposed to know unless you tell me? As far as I know, one of my powers isn’t reading minds. At least…” he frowned. “I don’t think so.”

“Cadmus… they didn’t just condition me to go crazy at the sound of classical music." Garfield said. "Some things… I think were accidental changes. Like, I’m worried that there's this…” 

As Garfield trailed off, trying to find the right words, Conner finished his sentence for him. “An anger that you don’t understand and can’t explain? You don’t know where it came from. It’s gone as quickly as it arrived. Sometimes, it doesn’t even feel like it belongs to you. And when it’s gone you’re left confused and disoriented and like you don’t know who you are anymore. It’s not who you are. It’s not who you want to be. But it’s so ingrained in who you are that you don’t know what you’d be without it, or how to change what it feels like you’ve always known.”

Garfield didn’t know what to say for that for a little while. “Yeah,” he eventually whispered. “Exactly.”

Krypto whined and licked at the back of Garfield’s hand. Conner smiled slightly and ran his hand over the white dogs back. It was a little dirty from travelling through back alley streets and into the dirty warehouse. “I understand that. A lot of my anger is leftover from Lex Luther’s DNA. And from what I’ve heard, Superman has some temper as well. But it’s alright, to be angry. Everyone gets angry. You shouldn’t feel bad. It just means that you’re human.”

Sniffling, Garfield couldn’t help but chuckle weakly as he wiped new, stinging tears from his eyes. “Wow, Conner, for waking up for the first time a few months ago, you somehow always know the right thing to say.”

Shrugging, Conner smiled, faint and sweet and genuine. “It’s a gift. I’ve never met him before, but I think I should be thanking Superman for my… way with words.”

“Or maybe it’s just a superpower that only belongs to you,” Garfield suggested. He really was tired. Not just ready for a rest, but his whole body ached with exhaustion like he’d been running for days without stopping or taking a breath and now that he was finally at the finish line, his body was catching up to him and screaming at him to sit down and stay there. “I’m just worried… what if I hurt someone? I don’t want to wake up one day and find everyone I care about mauled to death. That’s why I left. I don’t want to have to worry about that any more. And you weren’t there to see what they did to Jason. If I hurt any of them, even accidentally…”

“They shouldn’t blame you,” Conner said simply. “From what I’ve heard, Rachel has hurt you a couple of times. So has Kory, and Jason and Rose. You shouldn’t feel bad. I think they’ve hurt you more than you could ever hurt them.”

Garfield didn’t know what to say to that, because it was mostly true, so he decided not to acknowledge it. “I feel so stupid now,” he rubbed his hands together just to give himself something to do. “How embarrassing. They were right. I can’t go back there now.”

“Well, I mean, there’s no reason for us to go back right away,” Conner said. “We could hang out for a bit. Go for a walk. Explore. Maybe, we can just stay here and camp out for a few days. We don’t have to go to Coverton, or back to the tower. Maybe, if we stay away for long enough, they’ll realize how wrong they were, and they’ll beg you to come back. Recognize their wrongs. If we’re lucky, they’ll actually come looking for you.”

“Maybe,” Garfield said. “Who knows? Maybe they’ll be glad that I’m gone and they’ll leave me be and forget I ever existed. Maybe this was just the moment they were waiting for.”

“That might be true,” Conner agreed and Garfield felt his heart drop. “But they all went after Rachel when she ran away. And they tried to save Dick when he was arrested. If they don’t come after you or call you or apologize, then they never really cared about you, and you know that they were never really your friends.” he paused, and it was such a long one that Garfield actually turned to look at him. “And if it turns out that they never think of you again, then I’m going to go back there and drop them into the South China Sea.”

He was feeling so down and so broken and so tired that he actually laughed, a deep belly laugh that rocked him to his core and forced him to lean against a now giggling Conner for support. He laughed so hard that tears fell from his eyes, but he wasn’t sure if that was from stress or from laughing. “God, Conner, you’re the best.”

“What else are friends for?” Conner laughed, as he snaked an arm around Garfield’s shoulders and held him tight against his side and Garfield melted into the touch. “We’ll hang out here for a little bit, and after a while, we’ll go back, and see how things change.”

“But what if things don’t change?” Garfield's voice was muffled where his face was pressed into Conner’s shirt, and he hated how dejected he sounded

“Then we’ll figure out something else,” Conner sounded so sure of himself that Garfield wished he shared his confidence. “We don’t need a team. We can be a team, just the four of us. You, me, Krypto and the tiger. That’s enough, right? And then, once we figure out how to be a team, maybe eventually we’ll be our own little family. Um…are you alright with that?”

Suddenly, Garfield’s throat was dry, his tongue was heavy, and his lungs couldn’t draw breath. “Yeah, Conner. I think that’s a great idea.”

Deep within him, the tiger purred in agreement and settled back for a long, well-deserved sleep.


End file.
